


Overt

by ticktockclockwork



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bitty learning to love himself, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Song Inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 07:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10271180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticktockclockwork/pseuds/ticktockclockwork
Summary: Bitty goes back to Georgia for a family reunion and returns with more baggage than when he left. Jack helps work him through the delicate process of not-hating-yourself-quite-so-much.Fic written after someone requested more from my headcanon thatIf I Were A Boy is Bitty's sad anthem





	

Jack was in his apartment, making a protein shake, when his phone buzzed from where it was charging in the kitchen. He glanced over but didn’t rush to read it, knowing Bitty would be busy with his family reunion so anyone else could wait. He finished blending his shake, drank from it then headed back into his bedroom. He was pulling on his runners when he heard it buzz again, then once more, before it started ringing.

He limped out to catch it and saw that he had missed a call from Bitty. The three messages were from him as well but he didn’t read them right away, instead returning the call immediately. When Bitty picked up, barely one ring later, Jack could hear the sound of people all around him, and someone talking on a loudspeaker overhead. “Bitty? Hey bud, what’s wrong?” He asked, breath short.

“Hey sweetheart, hi, I’m alright now just, uhm. I know you have practice but, uhm…” his voice sounded shaky and Jack’s stomach dropped. “No, you know? No it’s okay, I’ll just take a taxi, it’s alright.” He tried to laugh but it came out watery.

“Bittle, where are you, what happened?” Jack demanded, rougher than he intended but he couldn't let Bitty deflect again.

“…. At the airport?” Bitty whispered, unsure. “I… I don’t want to talk about it, not yet but uhm. My flight leaves here in a few minutes and I’ll be in P-providence in a couple of hours and if you could-”

“I’ll be there.” Jack didn’t even need to be asked.

“You sure, honey? I.. I know you got practice and you usually go out with Tat-”

“Bitty, I’ll be there. Forward me your flight information.” Bitty made a noise of agreement and Jack gave him a moment when it sounded like he was a bit choked up. “I love you Bits, I’ll see you soon okay?” He assured him. Bitty gave him a watery reply then hung up.

Jack met him outside baggage claim and ached to pull him close but they were in public and it couldn’t happen. So he drove them home then led him upstairs then held him tight until Bitty let out a sob and cried. They hadn’t even taken off their coats.

When Bitty caught his breath, he pulled away and wiped furiously at his face, eyes puffy but finally dry. “Lord, what a mess I make. Did you go to practice? Oh Jack, I should have just taken a taxi, you didn’t need to skip.”

“Family emergency. Told them I needed today and tomorrow.” Jack said simply, reaching and taking Bitty’s hand, lifting it to kiss his knuckles. “What happened?”

Bitty held his gaze, his chin wobbling, before he just shook his head. “Nothing worth talking about, yeah? I’m home now and I wanna make you dinner and then maybe just go to bed early?”

It was obvious what was happening. Bitty we deflecting again but this time Jack would allow it. He was hurting, and by association Jack hurt too. But Bitty wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. Jack could respect that; often, after he’d had an attack, it took him awhile to talk about what triggered it. Sometimes he couldn’t, and they let it go.

So Jack let Bitty cook dinner and watch some TV. He didn’t say anything when they took separate showers and crawled into bed. But he did hold Bitty close and pretended to sleep while Bitty cried, knowing he needed the privacy along with the comfort.

He was surprised to find the bed empty when he woke. It was early, but the sun was coming up, just barely lighting up the sky. He shuffled out to the living room, a frown on his brow, before spotting Bitty curled up in a chair out on the balcony. He was wrapped in a blanket and was scrolling through his phone, his headphones in and looking openly, honestly sad, more than he’d been the day before.

The sliding glass door caught Bitty’s attention though he didn’t try and cover anything up. He was exposed, probably because he wanted to be, too tired to keep pretending. Jack moved over and without saying anything, tugged the blanket away so he could slide in behind him. He pulled him close then draped the blanket back over their laps, coming to rest with his chin hooked over Bitty’s shoulder.

He was silent as he watched Bitty scroll through a bunch of really old photos, some digital album that he had online. They were photos of him in his ice skating outfits, sequins and spandex galore. He was shining as bright and brilliant as Jack had ever seen him, even more than when he scored the winning goal in a game.

“This was my first medal. I got bronze.” He murmured though his voice was hard to hear, it was pitched so low. His music was still playing so Jack plucked an earbud out to listen to what he had on. 

“Oh, Bitty…” Jack whispered when he heard the familiar mournful song, pulling out Bitty’s other earbud and setting them aside, wrapping him in a hug and kissing his cheek. “Talk to me, mon amour. What happened at the reunion?”

Bitty wiped a stray tear that ran down his cheek and took a deep breath, shrugging his shoulders. “The usual. The south being the south.”

Jack waited, but when Bitty refused to say anything more, he sighed. “Was it your uncle? I thought you said they weren’t going to be there.”

“It wasn’t and they weren’t. It was just. A little bit of everything. I was stupid.” He scrubbed his face as frustration bubbled up. “We were at the park for a picnic since the weather was nice. I was wearing those floral shorts Ransom got for me and a yellow shirt. Some boat shoes, I don’t know. It was a little bit of me, a little bit of them, yanno. Well, my cousins thought it was just the funniest thing, my flower pants and just wouldn’t shut up about it. They kept saying it brings out my gay, or something. You know, idiot teenage stuff.”

Jack and Bitty had been out to Bitty’s family for a few months now so he understood the difference between slurs when they were unknowing and when they were not. He knew which ones hurt worse.

“I got so mad, Jack. They were laughing at me, calling me names so I walked up? And I just… well I just popped one in the mouth!” he huffed.

Jack sat up in shock. “You punched your cousin in the mouth?” He was gaping, he knew, but that just wasn’t what he’d expected.

“I did! And I ain’t exactly proud of it but I was so sick of it. And yanno the worst of it? Everyone got mad at _me_! They just kept saying that boys will be boys and they didn’t mean nothing by it but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to have no one making me feel small like that.” He shook his head and rubbed his eyes.

“So then Aunt June asked my momma if I would leave, saying I was setting a bad example for the little ones, by being so _overt_. She actually said that, can you believe it? Overt. The only thing overt ‘bout that reunion was Kelly’s new boobs.” He tugged and ripped at a loose thread on the blanket. “So mama drove me home and I was ranting the whole way and she finally she said, well she said to me…”

The anger rushed out of him all at once and he hung his head. “She said to me, ‘well Dicky, what did you think would happen? You can’t just expect us to support your lifestyle choices.’ Us. She said _us_. Lumped herself in with my aunt and those cousins and Coach who wouldn’t even look at me when I left.” 

Jack felt himself struggling, unable to decide if he wanted to cry with Bitty or rage for him. He was livid, that people could be so bigoted, that someone's _family_ could be so unloving. They’d both always known that Suzanne and Coach struggled with Bitty being gay but Jack had assumed that when push came to shove, they’d support their only son. That they’d fight in his corner.

“So.” Bitty sucked in a breath to steady himself. “I packed my bags and I changed my ticket and I came home, the south be damned.” There was no fire behind his words, though, and Jack knew he was hurting on the inside. “They wanted me to be ashamed of it like they were ashamed of it and when I wasn’t, they got mad.”

“I’m glad you came back home.” The fact that Bitty called Providence home already did something funny to Jack, but the fact that he felt safe here? Missed it, needed it when he needed comfort? Well that was something.

He took Bitty’s phone from him and started scrolling through the photos he was looking at. “You look good in these.”

“I look like a girl.”

“You look happy.”

“So I look like a happy girl?”

“Bittle…”

Jack felt Bitty sigh deeply, hunching up and wrapping around himself tighter. “Sorry…” he whispered. “I just… what if I _am_ overt? What if I _am_ obvious. I did look like a girl, Jack. My frame was small, my face fat. I had long hair, got the girls on my team to braid it back and put glitter in it for competitions. I never looked like a boy, or acted like one… sometimes I don’t feel like much of one even now.”

Jack had his eyes closed, face buried in Bitty’s shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, just that… I don’t often feel like a man you know. The rough and tough, spit on the ground kind of man. I can take checks on the ice but if Holster catches me off guard I still drop sometimes… I don’t wrestle with the boys like you and Shitty do, I think I’d lose even if I tried. I like pastels and baking and I like decorating our place and I like being… soft. I’m just not much of a man…”

Jack didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know Bitty had been holding all these insecurities inside and he, frankly, didn’t know how to react because he’d never felt that way. He’d always been built like a truck, aside from his chubby childhood, and he was always aggressively masculine in most everything. He was taciturn and brutish at times, he could take a punch and throw one, he wrestled Shitty regularly for four years and all in all he’d never once thought of himself as anything but a man.

“I think…” Jack whispered so quietly. “I think I just heard my boyfriend tell me that he punched a mouthy asshole in the face while wearing awesome floral shorts that his ass looks great in. I think I just heard my boyfriend tell me how he gave his family the middle finger and said ‘this is me and I won’t let you shame me away from that’. I think I just heard you tell me that you put your safety and happiness ahead of your parents bigotry. And if that doesn’t make you a man then I don’t know what does.”

“Jack…”

“No, Bitty, listen to me. I’ve seen you fireman carry Nursey _upstairs_ when he passed out an hour into a kegster. I’ve seen you push through your fear of checking not once but twice. I’ve seen you help every single person in the Haus whether physically or emotionally. You’ve put me in my place when I’m being an ass and through it all, I’ve never felt like you’ve been anyone other than Eric Bittle, the _man_ I love. You make me so, so proud. Every day. Your strength is shocking sometimes, and that’s not an exaggeration. If your family thinks, after all that, that you aren’t a man? Well they’re really damn wrong. Being a bully and an asshole doesn’t make you a man. It just makes you a bully, and an asshole.”

Jack fell quiet after that, feeling exhausted just from so much talking. He worked better with expressions, with action, not words. But Bitty needed to hear this stuff out loud so Jack made sure he said it. He held his boyfriend close and then bundled him tighter when he felt Bitty trembling.

“Thank you…” Bitty whispered. He turned to face Jack, to bury into his chest and Jack was happy to hold him through this. He’d be happy to hold him through anything honestly, but this was good enough for now.

Things weren’t perfect after that but Jack heard Bitty singing along to Halo far more than he did If I Were A Boy. He was able to draw out more smiles and chase away more nightmares and at the end of the week, he was able to send Bitty back to Samwell with a heart full of love and soul full of happiness. 

And if all else failed, telling the group chat that Bitty beat up his homophobic cousins while wearing floral was sure to draw out some loud support from the family that really mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! So I know the song was kind of used in passing in this fic but I wanted to write a bit about how one of these things would play out. My own coming out to my family has been a mess and as much as I love writing Suzanne and Coach being supportive of Bitty being out, it's hard for me because it isn't always realistic. And sometimes it hurts to write that when I didn't get it.
> 
> BUT ON THE PLUS bitty has a beautiful boyfriend who helps him when he needs it and loves him when he feels in short supply. So that's okay!
> 
> If I Were A Boy continues to be Bitty's Sad Anthem for me, though.
> 
> Come talk to be about it on Tumblr at [ticktockclockwork!](http://ticktockclockwork.tumblr.com/)


End file.
